Happy Memorial Day Weekend!
The Atlantic Monthly might be one of my new favorite food and nutrition publications! They don’t shy away from stepping into the middle of controversy to take some really common-sense positions. Let’s see how long it lasts!
No beans?!? A month ago, one of the Atlantic’s senior editors, James Hamblin, MD, did a feature around a new book I’m surprised and relieved to hear hasn’t seemed to make much of a splash yet in the rest of the popular media. The book, by a surgeon and former professor at Loma Linda University Medical School (a university affiliated with the Seventh Day Adventist Church, which requires adherents to follow a vegetarian diet), warns readers of the terrible dangers of eating most vegetables, especially legumes (peas, lentils, soybeans, peanuts…), claiming they’re responsible for pretty much everything that ails us. The miniscule kernel of real science on which this nonsensical argument is based is that many plants, as well as dairy products, contain a class of proteins called lectins that if eaten raw, can be slightly to very toxic. That’s why we don’t eat kidney beans, fava beans, or any other legumes without completely cooking them first (peanuts are best eaten roasted or boiled for another reason). By this logic, all societies that have subsisted on tofu and other soy foods or other mainly vegetarian diets should have long died out, and vegetarians should be the least healthy among us! Need I say more?!? I will not give the book any free advertising by mentioning its name or its author’s name. However, if you do decide to consult Dr. Google, yourself, you will see numerous references to why you should rid your diet of lectins. Please do yourself a favor and ignore these dubious sites, and make a note to avoid their advice in the future!
News flash: gluten does not cause heart disease. Hamblin, the Atlantic editor, wrote a piece this past week on a just-released Harvard-Yale study showing that gluten does not cause heart disease. Huh? What? At first, this seems like one of those “Who would even ask this question, let along devote research to it?” questions. But some of you might recall a couple of books that came out 5-7 years ago with names like Bread Head or Wheat Feet or something like that. Shamefully, the authors of these books are, themselves, Harvard- and Yale-trained doctors who have decided to join Dr. Oz in making money by dishing up baseless nutrition ideas while pretending to help people manage their health. What the legitimate Harvard-Yale study found was that not only does gluten not lead to heart disease, shunning gluten actually puts people at risk for some vitamin deficiencies.
From wheat to eggs. Bon Appetit magazine recently launched a new section they’re calling Healthy-ish. One of the latest pieces investigated the true meanings of all the confusing designations that seem to be proliferating on egg cartons (e.g., cage-free, organic, free-range). The biggest safety concern with eggs is not the use of hormones (illegal) or antibiotics (rarely given to laying hens) or even their possible contribution to unhealthy lipid levels (still a controversial area of nutrition): The biggest issue with eggs is contamination of raw eggs with the bacteria, salmonella, which is responsible for more cases of food-borne illness in the US than any other organism. One of the factors thought to promote the spread of salmonella is the massive crowding of hens on large “factory” farms. But contrary to what the article states, the evidence that organic, cage-free eggs carry any less risk of salmonella contamination than other eggs is pretty much non-existent. The federal Centers for Disease Control provides sound advice on how to avoid salmonella through safe egg handling.
More egg idiocy. The American Council on Science and Health recently called attention to a new baseless piece of nutrition advice that is making the rounds: the idea that we should consume eggs only in their raw or least cooked form because cooking supposedly converts cholesterol into a more dangerous form. First, no evidence exists to support this idea, and second, the risk of salmonella contamination from consuming raw eggs is a truly legitimate concern.
And finally, as if we need more excuses to eat chocolate? This week’s New York Times Health section featured a just-released study thought to shed light on how chocolate might help protect against heart disease. Unfortunately for the study subjects, they didn’t get to eat lots of chocolate. Instead, as is usually the case, the researchers quizzed a bunch of folks about what they usually ate (using the least reliable method – a food frequency questionnaire—kind of like leading the witness) and then periodically checked up on them over a number of years, finding that eating more chocolate seemed to be associated with less risk for a condition called atrial fibrillation. Even the study’s authors warned that the results were only suggestive and that chocolate should be eaten in moderation as part of a healthy diet…